With the advent of smart device technology, increasing number of smart devices have been deployed for residential, commercial and military uses nowadays. Examples of these devices include smart utility meters, sensors, control devices, routers, regulators, etc. Generally, when a new device is deployed, a technician will go to a field where the new device will be deployed and manually set up the new device in the field. The technician may, for example, configure and authenticate the new device with a network. The technician may then register the new device with the network and possibly a central server that maintains information of each device in the network.
The standard way of registration and joining a wireless network places a heavy load on the wireless network and may lead to congestion on an already heavily loaded network. The standard approach of joining a wireless network consists of three steps: first a joining node must complete 802.1x authentication, then the node communicates with a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server to acquire an internet protocol (IP) address, and finally the node contacts a network management server (NMS) to obtain required configuration information. These three steps demand heavy end-to-end packet exchange, which provides a considerable load for challenged wireless communication networks.